Anything Goes: Maybe
by KatzchenHexe
Summary: Today was a momentous one. He, Hamlet Elsinore, would move on from his father's death and start acting like a human instead of an emo android. Until his girlfriend decided today was a good day to tell him she was pregnant. Crap.
1. Introduction

Hello, Hello!

If you are clicking on _"Anything Goes….Maybe"_ for the first time, a brief word before the story begins in its insane glory. I did not come up with the premise of this story. It came from a "Conspiracy Theory" I read on the internet. I originally thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever read, and that whoever came up with the idea must have just had tea with Mothman. After a while, though, I found it pretty funny. My friend suggested I write a fanfic out of it, "for the lulz". And thus was the origin of this story.

Many of the events in the play Hamlet are left out or in the wrong place. Say goodbye to the Ghost, "To be or not to be" and the closet scene. And many of the characters may seem a bit different. This is intentional. While "avenging a murder" was commonplace and acceptable in Shakespeare's day, it is not the norm or, for that matter, legal today so I highly doubt that the first thing to pop to a 21st century Hamlet's mind would be "avenge!" I've spent enough evenings reading the play enough, watched enough of the movies, and read commentaries in varying degrees of useless enough that I don't need an exact translation. In my mind, that defeats the point of fanfiction. If you want something perfectly in cannon, go read the original. Fanfiction is a realm all to its own where we can take our favorite characters, make them jump through hoops and laugh at their misfortunes.

KatzchenHexe


	2. Results

Today was a most momentous day. Today, he, Hamlet Elsinore of Denmark Industries, a massive company dealing in household items, clothes and furnishings, would snap out of his funk, move on from his father's death and start acting like a human instead of an emo android. He would start dressing in colors again, be nice to his friends and his mother, wash his hair once in a while, and put something besides Evanescence and Nirvana on his iPod

He smiled to himself as he picked up his coffee and looked out his office window. Some poor driver was trying to get into the parking lot without being swarmed by the paparazzi. Good luck, chuck. They had been a media phenomena since his father's highly publicized death in his hammock and his mother's remarriage to his uncle. He went back to his desk and opened his music files. After turning on a Led Zepplin song, and making sure the volume was at a level where only his secretary outside could hear it, he brought out a gigantic planner, a telephone book, and several massive boxes of "samples" of just about every fad microwave you can imagine. Why, oh why did it have to be his job to review makers and models that Denmark Ind. was considering carrying?

His buzzer going off startled him while he was in the process of writing a not so polite "we have decided not to carry this product" to a manufacturer of a microwave that had produced popcorn that was only half popped and couldn't even make a peep explode.

"Mr. Hamlet, sir, y…"

"Hang on a second, Lillian, can you think of a synonym for 'god awful crap I wouldn't trust to nuke cat food?'"

"Erm, how about 'undesirable for practical reasons?"'

"Thanks, Lil, let me type that up…"

"Sir, your girlfriend is here to see you. "

"Ophelia?" He and Ophelia had known each other for years, as her father, Polonius, was a public relations executive for Denmark. They had begun dating in their later years in high school, and had both gone to the University of Whittenburg, provided he had majored in business (purely as a matter of necessity, he'd rather have studied philosophy) and she in history. He could go on all day about the wonders of Ophelia. Among all the snotty C., celebrity chefs, and bleached blonde goldiggers , she was real. She wasn't some plastic Barbie doll or a Magic 8 ball that answered "yes," "absolutely" and "most definitely" to everything he said like most of the girls he knew.

"Yes, sir, that's the one!"

"Do I have another girlfriend she could be?"

"You're the one who asked, sir."

"Tell her the door's open." He jumped up from behind the desk, trashed a french fry box, ran his fingers through his hair and strode halfway to the door before it opened.

Ophelia opened the door, stepped in, closed it quickly, sniffed and wiped her eyes.

"Hi." She said, waving weakly with one hand. The other was clutching her purse like it was a lifeline.

"Ophelia!" Hamlet said, alarmed. "What's the matter?" She rushed into his arms and began sobbing on his shoulder. "Ophelia! What's happened?" She pulled away from him and reached into her purse. She pulled out a plastic bag with what looked like a white, plastic popsicle stick inside.

"That and four others and they all say the same thing!" She went around to his desk chair and collapsed down into it, crying hysterically. He held the bag up and realized, with a horrible jolt, what he was looking at.

"Pregnancy test?"

"Mmhhmm," she nodded. He felt his heart sink all the way into his shoes.

"Positive?" She nodded and bawled harder than ever. He put a hand over his eyes and rubbed his temples. "Suddenly, I think I have a migraine."

"You think you have a migraine?!" Ophelia demanded. "My breakfast consisted of dry saltine crackers, ice cubes and ginger tea! Not to mention the media hype there will be, there goes a master's degree in history, and" (She looked horrified by the idea) "how my father will react! Waaaa!"

Hamlet went around to the desk chair and pulled her up into his arms before easing back down with her in his lap.

"Don't worry, I'm sure it will all work out…" He said, bracingly, stroking her blonde head and praying he wasn't lying. "We'll manage, and I'm sure Polonius will be…accepting of his grandchild…" He never got any farther before his buzzer went off again. Exasperated, he leaned over and flipped the intercom on again.

"What is it now, Lillian!"

"Sir, the results of the autopsy…"

"Tell whoever it is that he can take the autopsy and give it to the devil! I've got more important things to worry about!" He flipped the intercom off.

"Mr. Hamlet-" Lillian's voice came over the intercom again.

"WHAT!!!"

"It's Horatio. He says-" Lillian was cut off and a different voice came to them.

"Uh, Hamlet, it's me, your buddy Horatio. Listen, we need to talk, the results are officially clean, but, but it was kind of wonky, I found some weird stuff. Something is rotten in the Wonderful World of Denmark Industries."

"Horatio, 'old buddy' I've got a bit of an issue to tend to here, so if you would kindly…"

"Oh, no, Hamlet," Ophelia said, raising her head and mopping her face on his collar. "You go ahead and…" She reached over his arm and flipped the intercom on herself. "Horatio? It's me, Ophelia. You come right on in; I'm just on my way out." She picked up her purse from the desk, and without another word, pushed open the door, past a very confused Horatio, and disappeared."


	3. Wait, Where did I Sign up for This?

Today was just one of those days when you find yourself vomiting into the bathtub, with nobody to hold your hair back. Ophelia didn't bother moving from the bathroom floor when the doorbell rang. Damn whoever it was. But they didn't stop.

"Ophelia, open up! We know you're there!"

"No, I' m not! I booked a trip Tahiti and am relaxing on the beach with a pina colada!" She yelled back.

"Ophelia," a second, female voice called. She sighed, got up and went to the door, expecting to yell at the neighbors and tell them that she did NOT want to go to some Cameo Brooch and Lampshade Enthusiast festival.

"Congratulations, Mummy!"

"Ophelia!" Horatio and his girlfriend Marcella stood in the doorway, screaming hysterically. Horatio was brandishing a bouquet like a machete and stuffed it into her arms, while Marcie flung herself at her and hugged her.

"Huh? What?" She stuttered, in utter confusion.

"Sorry, Hamlet spilled the beans when I saw him after you left." Horatio explained.

"We brought ice cream and ginger ale, too." Marcie said, holding up several grocery bags. Ophelia tried to smile, but a wave of nausea crashed over her.

"What's wrong?" Horatio said worriedly. "Don't you like rocky road?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "The flowers are lovely too." She leaned against the doorframe and hoped it would pass.

"Oh, Ophelia!" Marcie exclaimed, noticing the chunks of vomit still in her hair, and looking a bit horrified. "Honey, were you sick?" She nodded. "Where?"

"Bathroom."

"Horatio, go clean up, I'll help her with her hair." Half an hour later Ophelia was settled on the sofa in a terry bathrobe, her wet hair hanging down her back, and feeling better for Marcie's force feeding her a bit of toast and ginger ale. Marcie was cutting the ends off the flowers and arranging them for her, and Horatio had set up her Xbox Karaoke and was failing miserably at "Getting Jiggy Wit It."

The doorbell rang again. Marcie flung down a rose and went to the door and flung it open.

"GAH!!! Marcie! Point that knife somewhere else!" Horatio and Ophelia both started laughing.

"Oh, sorry, man, I didn't realize I was still holding this!"

"Nah, it's okay. Where's Ophelia?"

"She's in the living room, watching Horatio learn he doesn't know the verses of 'Getting Jiggy Wit It' after all and he's too white to rap even if he did."

"That's great, Horatio, play that funky music, white boy!" Hamlet called.

"Oi! I may be white, but I'm more educated than you!"

"Ha! And you've got a student loan, to match!" Ophelia quipped.

"I'm glad to see that national Pick on Horatio Day is a wild success." He retorted, rolling his eyes.

"Let's not forget either, that I've already brought your 'baby mama' a gift and you turn up empty handed. What's with that?"

"I didn't stop by Food Lion on my way here. Besides, I've got, er, business to discuss with her."

"Oh…I know what this is." Horatio said, sobering instantly and looking rather uneasy. "You know, there is no conclusive evidence that it was, well, murder."

"You were pretty convinced when you told me an hour ago! And he practically confesses whenever he says anything about Dad."

"What?!" Marcie demanded. "Who's 'he?'"

"Old Hamlet? Murdered?" Ophelia asked in quiet disbelief.

"It's just a possibility!" Horatio interjected.

"You see, I've thought that his death was a bit…sudden for a while. How many people are healthy when they go to their hammock and come back dead with absolutely no sign of a heart attack or anything?"

"But who could have murdered old Hamlet!" Marcie wondered. "He had body guards. I was positioned at the entrance to the garden!" She was a security-cum-body guard at Denmark Industries.

"Claudius." Hamlet said darkly. Ophelia felt her jaw drop open. "Horatio, you were the one who worked on the autopsy, tell us what you found."

Horatio shot him a very sour look before starting. "I found traces of a poison on his right ear. But my professor said no. He said that it was probably a mix of earwax and chemicals associated with decay."

"But why would they be in the right ear only?" Marcie asked.

"Because thanks to a careless worker, the body was leaning slightly to its right side while in the morgue!"

"And do you believe it?"

"I don't know what to believe! I was having this CSI moment when I told Hamlet an hour ago, now I get away from the corpse, and the smell of alcohol and chemical analysis results, it seems kind of ridiculous."

"I believe it." Ophelia said grimly. "Hamlet's right, Claudius all but confesses every time somebody mentions old Hamlet, and it's really creepy the way he married Gertrude so quickly."

"Yeah, I'll admit, _that_ is more than a bit icky." Marcie shuddered. "It's basically incest."

"Basically incest!" Hamlet exclaimed. "It's her brother in law! Not to mention that they got married, what, a whopping six weeks after Dad died? Personally I think re-marriage is an insult to the deceased partner as it is, but that's like he was a goldfish that needed replacing!"

"Not sure about the insult part, but I agree with you about the goldfish."

"So what did you do?" Ophelia asked, before this could turn into one of Hamlet's great moral debates.

"What else? I called the FBI. They told me I should get therapy to help me cope with my grief and stop bugging them."

"Lovely." Muttered Marcie. "No wonder those white house crashers didn't have any problems getting in."

"Hamlet," a horrible thought had come to Ophelia. "If Claudius did murder your dad, and if he thinks you're wise to him, it's probably not that safe for you or anybody who thinks you're right. If he didn't have a problem killing his own brother, then what qualms would he have about killing me, or Horatio or Marcie?"

"That's what I was thinking when I came over here. I particularly don't think it's safe for you. I heard Mom and Claudius saying something about the possibility of adopting. Although Claude was assuring her in no uncertain terms that in that case I would still be the heir to Elsinore Ind."

"Oh god. This is no good."

"No, it's not. I also don't think it would be the best time for an announcement of your pregnancy. Mom and Claude have put a lot of effort into lying low and keeping out of tabloids."

"Nooo, definitely not. So is there a plan?"

"First, I think we should take an oath that we will not reveal what we know to anybody."

"What are we making the oath over?" Horatio asked.

"First of all, we will keep the suspicions of the murder to ourselves, we will not reveal plans that we may form to anybody but we four, and that we will not reveal Ophelia's pregnancy until things are safe or she sees fit."

"Sounds fair to me."

"A good plan." Marcie held out her hand. The other three piled theirs on top.

"We, Hamlet Elsinore, Ophelia Rigby, Horatio Meyers and Marcella Rodriguez-"

"Rodriguez Bisento, get it right!"

"What?"

"I'm Latin, so my mother's maiden name follows my father's in my name, so I'm Marcella Rodriguez Bisento!"

"Oh, sorry, and Marcella Rodriguez Bisento swear confidentiality on the discussed matters, unless we see fit to reveal them to any other party, on condition of his silence as well, and loyalty to each other."

"Well that was overly complex and formal."

"Now, tell us the plan." Ophelia said.

"Act like everything is normal?" Hamlet suggested. The two women groaned.

"I like that plan. Simple and effective." Horatio said.

_Author's note: Hi kids, welcome back! Please fasten your seat belts and keep your arms and legs down and inside of the ride. Thank you, and enjoy your ride on KatzchenHexe's "Anything Goes, Maybe."_

_Sorry about that._

_So far I have had only a bit of feedback, so reviews of any type, love it and sitting on the edge of your seat for more (hey, I can dream!!) or hate it with a burning passion and want me to stop vivisecting your brain (much more likely), are appreciated!_


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